Une Bière, S'il Vous Plaît

Bayou Teche brewery lives in an unassuming red building in Arnaudville. The company didn’t start out there, though. Four years ago, Karlos Knott and his two brothers thought they’d just be brewing a few batches for sale to local grocers and restaurants. They were operating in a discarded railroad car with one single-barrel fermenter. Now they’ve expanded their facilities, increased production with additional thirty-barrel fermenters, opened a tasting room, and will be holding monthly themed dinners featuring one of their specialty beers, food, a band, and good company. “If I’d known we were going to grow like this,” said Knott, “I would have built this in the first place.”

The nine-member Bayou Teche team brews the recognizable LA 31 fleet (Bière Pâle, Boucanée, Bière Noire, and Passionné) and mainstay Acadie in addition to upwards of fifteen seasonal beers that are produced in small batches once a year. “We’ve taken a different approach this year,” said Knott. “We’re just going to do what we want to do and please the people who like our beer… We’ve really made an effort to distinguish ourselves from the big breweries.”

Right now, for instance, you can pick up Courir de Mardi Gras, a French farmhouse-style beer called a bière de mars (March beer) typically made with Pilsner, Munich, and wheat malt that lend a taste of spring to the beer. Crawfish season, too, is honored with its own beer—Saison D’Écrevisses (Crawfish Season). Like all of their beers, this particular brew is designed to complement the briny spiciness of a perfectly boiled crawfish—the perfection that makes your lips ache for chapstick and your fingers enemies of your eyes for at least twenty-four hours. Brewmaster Gar Hatcher always keeps Louisiana cuisine top-of-mind, creating beers that appropriately compliment the specific styles of cooking prevalent in South Louisiana households.

Bayou Teche’s beers are garnering national attention. Loup Garou, one of the latest beers to come out of the brewery, just won a silver medal in the Wood Aged Beer category at the World Beer Championship held recently in Chicago. This medal is the fifth of four second-place wins Bayou Teche has earned at this competition. The distinctive flavor of this dark, heavy beer comes from generous portions of chocolate, roasted Belgian malts, brown sugar, and hops, which are then aged in whiskey barrels of Jack Daniel’s provenance. Incidentally, they brewed this to go with raw oysters; and if you decide to drop a raw oyster in a shot glass full of Loup Garou, you’ll be in good company.

Other whiskey barrel-aged beers on tap are Bière Joi, a coffee ale, and Miel Sauvage, a honey ale. The guys will be experimenting with chardonnay barrels next: look for their tentatively named Joe LeBlanc (riffing off the Cajun anthem, “Jolie Blonde”), another bière de mars.

Bayou Teche will be hosting a free dinner (but you buy the beer) on the last weekend of February themed around its homage to the band Rush’s album 2112 (Their best album, Knott said). A play on the album name, the beer is called 3113; and they will be serving this rich, wild black cherry-infused favorite (it was only available at the brewery and sold out in a few days) from a last remaining keg.

Keep up with the latest beer releases and events on their Facebook page. A votre santé!